Theatre in Review: Food (Brooklyn Academy of Music Fisher/Fishman Space)

	Geoff Sobelle. Photo: Stephanie Berger

I hope Geoff Sobelle has an unlimited supply of Tums. Partway through his new theatre piece, Food, he commits an apparent act of gluttony that has audience members laughing, whispering, and shaking their heads in disbelief. Playing a waiter at the end of a long workday, the actor counts his tips and, kicking back, bites into an apple. And another, and another, six in all. Then he tucks into a bunch of cherries (or cherry tomatoes; I couldn't be sure), making a popping noise as each one disappears into his mouth. Next, he drinks an entire bottle of ranch dressing, after which he hoovers up a bowl of salad. Even more astonishing are the celery stalks that he dispatches like a sword swallower. Is he done? Not on your life. A bunch of carrots disappear, followed by a steak, baked potato, and a fish that he previously dropped on the floor. For liquid refreshment, he has several raw eggs and bottles of wine, each of which is emptied in a single gulp. As a digestif, he lights up and devours numerous cigarettes before tearing into napkins, checks, and paper money.

Clearly, the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest pales in comparison to this marathon meal. My first thought was: This is a matinee day; he can't possibly do this twice. Whether he actually consumes all these comestibles is a matter of skepticism -- Sobelle created Food with the magician Steve Cuiffo -- but if it is an illusion, it is remarkably convincing. After the performance I attended, everyone in the audience wandered into the street, loudly trying to figure out how he did it.

This sequence is only the entrée in a multicourse theatrical banquet presided over by Sobelle, exhibiting his best waiterly manner. (If, in his salad days, he didn't toil in a restaurant, I'll eat my hat; he clearly knows the drill.) As the piece begins, about three dozen audience members are seated at a three-sided table large enough to serve as a stage; they are the evening's dedicated "diners," although food is only notionally on the table. Wine is served and orders are taken, although the delivery method can be comically unusual. For example, a guest, prompted to ask for a "farm-to-table experience," requests a baked potato. Sobelle produces a mound of dirt out of which he digs up a spud, wrapping it in tinfoil and "warming" it with a lighter. Another patron asks for freshly caught arctic char; within seconds, Sobelle, dressed in a parka and sunglasses, with platters for snowshoes, is trekking across the dining table, each footstep accompanied by the sound of cracking ice. He saws a hole in the table and withdraws a fish that flops around, apparently gasping for air. Nothing is too good for his customers!

Later, Sobelle removes the tablecloth altogether -- no mean feat, considering its size -- to reveal a vast dirt landscape that is gradually transformed by the addition (and deletion) of buffalo action figures and grain crops. Reaching into the dirt, Sobelle withdraws his hand, which is covered in oil. Derricks are added, along with a mansion, a factory emitting smoke, additional buildings, and dozens of motor vehicles. It's the rise of the modern industrial society in miniature -- it almost looks like the setting of Edna Ferber's Giant in diorama form -- and it paints a bleak picture of grim overdevelopment.

The picture is not brightened by a guest, seated at the table, who reads from a long, long list of edibles that gradually turns away from natural ingredients toward synthetics like the cronut and Impossible Burger. Sobelle seems to be arguing, persuasively, that, culinarily speaking and perhaps in other ways, too -- we have lost our way. (Aside from a fit of spontaneous giggles, this passage was delivered with enormous assurance at the performance I attended. Some of Sobelle's interactions with guests are the result of prompts on the menus they are given. But what about this lengthy passage or another where two women were made to speak over one another? Again, audience members left the theatre madly speculating about how it was done.)

In addition to its considerable wizardry, Sobelle's piece is concerned with food as an expression of civilization. If we are what we eat, what does that say about us, and do we really want to know? Sobelle, who is possessed of a Keatonesque precision and restraint, steps lightly (and, largely, wordlessly) through each sequence, captivating us and making us think about his subject in entirely new ways.

Lee Sunday Evans, who co-directed with Sobelle, certainly contributes to the show's pitch-perfect tone and assured pacing. Devin Cameron's lighting design, based on Isabella Byrd's original, effectively reshapes the space as needed, creating marked shifts of tone with the addition of saturated color washes. The impressive chandelier is by Steve Dufala. Tei Blow's sound design, beginning with some Chet Baker recordings to set the tone then repeatedly resetting it with effects that include street sounds, clucking chickens, birdsong, thunder, rain, and the song "Forever" by The Little Dippers.

Despite its brief, eighty-minute running time, Food calls up an encyclopedia's worth of questions about the things we eat -- where they come from, how they are prepared, and why we consume them. It's a thoughtful essay merged with a magic show, served up with plenty of deadpan comedy. It deserves all the Michelin stars it can get. --David Barbour